Overview
Deep down, we’d all like to work more efficiently. So why don’t we? First, it takes effort (anything worth doing does!), and we’re naturally lazy. Second, often there’s a lack of awareness. People just don’t realize how many opportunities they have for working more efficiently. They’re deep in a comfort zone.
I hereby give you the ten commandments of efficiency. In this blog article, we’ll briefly dissect each one – what it means and why it’s important.
The commandments
1. Thou shalt not do irrelevant work
It’s amazing how much work people do that really isn’t necessary. It’s not contributing to or achieving any purpose or goal. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who admit there is a large amount of work done at their organization that is no longer relevant (and maybe never was!). To succeed with this commandment, you need to take a step back and look at the big picture, likely as a team. Not only will you find many tasks you can stop doing, you might find some you should be doing! Why give this some thought? Well, if it’s not obvious, this is the biggest efficiency gain you’ll get – 100% time savings!
2. Thou shalt honor thy true priorities
Setting and executing priorities is one of the most important things we can all do. The higher your leadership level, the more important it is! Here’s a separate article just on priority best practices. If you don’t set them, schedule them, and [generally] tackle them first, they don’t get done. And you’ll often regret it as weeks, months, and years go by.
3. Thou shalt be prepared
Being prepared can mean a lot of things. Fundamentally, it means planning. It means thinking things through to the end goal. It means having a clear and actionable agenda. It means having the right resources in place. It means rehearsing or role-playing. I like to be overly prepared (almost to a fault). But guess what? It’s saved my rear many times. And I’m often the first person people call when they need help. Checklists, cheatsheets, and notes are a great way to ensure you’re prepared.
4. Thou shalt not multitask
Many people are in great denial about how well they think they multitask. Study after study shows that it’s simply not possible to focus deeply on two things at once – both tasks suffer greatly. While it’s possible to focus on a passive task at the same time as a deep task, it’s still not recommended. On the other hand, parallel tasking is great – where one task happens in the background (with no focus) while you focus deeply on something else. Laundry is a great example. If there are tasks you can automate and have running in the background, go for it!
5. Thou shalt not worship SALY
In some professions (like accounting), SALY (same as last year) is a well-known running joke. Things happen so routinely without any improvement effort that it becomes a major source of humor. If you have a well-defined and executed process and there have been no internal/external conditions warranting change, by all means do what you did last year! But more often than not, there’s a better way the process could be done, maybe even with resources you already have! Make it a point to review processes and prioritize the ones that cause the most errors, take the most time, and cause the most frustration, and see what the options are for improvement
6. Thou shalt be organized
Benjamin Franklin famously said “A minute spent organizing is worth an hour spent searching.” What a great point. Then why do we continue to spend hundreds of hours a year looking for stuff? Because we just don’t take this seriously enough (refer back to #2 above). Creating endless network and hard drive folders is a big culprit. Try to keep them clean and logically organized. Add shortcuts between related folders so it’s easy to jump back and forth. Use search tools (like this one) to quickly find files. For the physical stuff, make it a point to constantly put things back where you found them!
7. Thou shalt use keyboard shortcuts
It’s well-proven (even by me!) that keyboard shortcuts are much quicker than using the mouse (at least 3x quicker, much more if they combine steps or help you avoid deep menu navigation). Learn as many as you can, a couple at a time, for the actions you perform most. Make it a goal – you’ll be thankful you did. If they don’t exist, see if you can build them, or for Excel, leverage the XLEV8 add-in, where you can set your own for hundreds of common actions.
8. Thou shalt save thy favorites
Playing off of #6 above, when you save favorites (websites, files, folders, settings, restaurant orders, Amazon purchases, TV channels, etc.), you’re saving a lot of time from searching again. And in many cases, you’re also providing valuable feedback – those Amazon subscribe and save items? That helps them plan inventory levels, which often results in quicker shipping and cheaper prices! Save the brainpower and save your favorites. You can always un-favorite them if needed.
9. Thou shalt use minimal paper
If you use much paper for your work, just realize that it’s a big opportunity to make things quicker and cheaper. Digital is easier and cheaper to create, search, store, share, clone, and back up. I once worked for a restaurant company that shipped a ton of paper from the restaurants to the corporate office. Every week – stacks of paper. That were then filed. Then filed again somewhere else. Then sifted through. Then ultimately destroyed. I did some rough math and estimated this $200 million revenue company was spending about $1.5 million just on those paper costs! Even if half of that is cut, it’s a huge win!
10. Thou shalt automate thy work
Automation is just one component of efficiency, as you can see from this list. Virtually anything done with a computer can be automated to an extent. Doing so generally reduces errors and frees up time for more valuable work, like analyzing trends and exceptions. Automating processes seems like a nice-to-have until you consider the manual effort as a costly time leak and consider the opportunity cost. I often argue that you can’t afford to wait. You’ll either have more and more demanded of you, getting further and further behind, or you can prioritize the most impactful tasks to automate, then reinvest that time for more automation, and get further and further ahead.
Summary
With change happening and complexity growing faster than ever, being agile and adaptable so you can respond to changing market conditions is crucial. Having efficient processes throughout your business is a key aspect of agility. Ensuring that team members have some capacity to strategize and share creative insights depends on process efficiency. You can also keep costs down by maximizing efficiency. It gives you quite a competitive edge, doesn’t it?
Do you have your own efficiency commandments? How have they impacted you and how did they come about? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
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